Operators employ system management solutions to assist in managing multiple computers, from tens of computers to over tens of thousands computers. System management systems can be used to inventory the hardware and software on these computers, install and update software on these computers, collect and distribute custom software packages into manageable groups, provision computers, manage and deploy configuration files, monitor these computers, provision and start/stop/configure virtual guests, and distribute content across multiple geographical sites in an efficient manner. Because of the large numbers of computers that can be managed by the system management solutions, large amounts of information pertaining to the managed computers is generated by these solutions.
To support this large amount of stored information, the system management solutions includes a database management system. A database management system is a software system that is used for building, maintaining and accessing a database. There are several databases management system known in the art that can be employed by a systems management solutions (ORACLE™ Database Management System (DBMS), MYSQL™, IBM DB2™, POSTGRESQL™, MICROSOFT SQL™, etc.). Each of these database managements systems can use a relational database that is based on the structured query language (SQL). SQL is a standard query language for retrieving, adding and updating information from database systems. However, each DBMS can add non-standard SQL extensions to that are specific to that DBMS, implement part of a standard SQL, and/or implement different SQL standards or non-standard SQL extensions in different versions. When non-standard SQL extensions are used by the system management solution, then that system management solution is tied to corresponding DBMS. To change the DBMS used for the system management solution would require rewriting the SQL extensions used by the solution management system. This is typically done by changing the application code of the software used in the solution management system, which can be a very difficult task.